Fugitive Colors Read online

  Praise for Lisa Barr’s Fugitive Colors:

  “Lisa Barr’s writing is mesmerizing, her palette of words is as colorful and energetic as the art and the artists she envisions.”

  —Deby Eisenberg, author of Pictures of the Past

  “The suspense and thrill make this a quick, can’t-put-it-down book—and establish Barr, a journalist for more than 20 years, as a bona fide novelist.”

  —Michigan Avenue Magazine

  “Mixing romance and horror, history and imagination, high art and doubledealing artifice, Lisa Barr has fashioned a dynamic page-turner of young artists caught up in the Nazis rise to power and their leaders’ attempted control over the definition, sanctioning and purposes of art… . Fugitive Colors has a cinematic feel.”

  —Philip K. Jason, professor emeritus of English at the United States Naval Academy, and Special to the Jewish News of Sarasota-Manatee

  “Fugitive Colors became a fascinating and frightening history lesson for me… . It is rare that I read a book twice. However, Fugitive Colors is one of those rare finds that is worthy of a second read.”

  —Sandy De Lisle, author of Pure Enough

  “Sinister one moment and uplifting the next. All the twists and turns and sex and violence; I was totally hooked … like Sarah’s Key but so much better.”

  —Bonnie Rochman, Timeinc.com

  “The book is fabulous. It is full of excitement plus so much information about art and World War II. It is a must-read for all.”

  —Samuel R. Harris, president emeritus of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, and author of Sammy: Child Survivor of the Holocaust

  A Novel

  LISA BARR

  Arcade Publishing

  NEW YORK

  Copyright © 2013 by Lisa Barr

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  First Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Arcade Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].

  Arcade Publishing® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.arcadepub.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Barr, Lisa.

  Fugitive Colors : a novel / Lisa Barr.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-1-62872-299-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)

  1. Artists—France—Paris—20th century—Fiction. 2. Art—France—Paris—20th century —Fiction. 3. Americans—France—Paris—20th century—Fiction. 4. Nineteen thirties—Fiction. 5. Nazis—Fiction. 6. Suspense fiction. I.Title.

  PS3602.A777434F84 2013

  813’.6—dc23

  2013012206

  Printed in the United States of America.

  To David—My Love, My Passion, My Secret Editor & To My Beautiful Girls—Noa, Maya, and Maya (xoxo Always & Forever)

  “Color has taken possession of me; no longer do I have to chase after it. I know that it has hold of me forever … Color and I are one. I am a painter.”

  —Paul Klee, artist

  “Anyone who sees and paints a sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilized.”

  —Adolf Hitler

  Prologue

  CHICAGO, 1926

  Yakov Klein slowly ran his finger over the cover of the art book he was about to steal from the library, as a burglar would a precious jewel just snatched from a glass case. Pressing the book to his face, he inhaled the familiar dusty scent of his latest prize: Gustav Klimt. It was a delicious moment, but one he would have to savor later, in the secrecy of his bedroom once the lights were out and his parents were sleeping. Right now, he had to get out of the library without getting caught.

  Shoving the thick book inside his overcoat, Yakov quickly made a beeline from the art collection toward the exit, one floor down, and across the long vaulted hallway. The linoleum floor squeaked loudly as he neared the sole librarian bent over a bottom shelve next to a pile of just-returned books. He paused briefly and stared at the librarian’s large buttocks straining too tightly against the cheap material of her royal blue skirt. If only he could paint her like that—compromised, determined to get the book alphabetized and in its place—but he kept walking. Thirty two more steps until he was safely out the door.

  From the corner of his eye, Yakov saw a little girl, no more than five, holding her mother’s hand and watching him. He knew what she saw— what everyone saw when they looked at him—the long black wool coat, the tall black silk hat that was still too big, and the payis—long sidelocks—that Jewish custom had required him to grow his whole life. It was a uniform borne of a different century. Yakov, son of Benjamin, raised as an Orthodox Jew, wore some version of the same clothing every day—black and white, a wardrobe devoid of color or change—and he hated it.

  That’s why he stole the art book. If truth were told, that was why he had been stealing art books since the week after his bar mitzvah, nine months earlier. He desperately needed color. This desire was apparent at age seven when he discovered his mother’s special pale pink lipstick stashed in the skinny wooden drawer in the nightstand by her bed. It was the same color as the covering for the challah on the Sabbath table. It was also the same color as the fancy napkins his mother put out on Rosh Hashanah. Yakov took the lipstick. He knew it was wrong, but he had to have it. Pink, he thought with excitement, was also the color of the forbidden pig—that un-kosher swine his father always ranted on about.

  Yakov thought a lot about pigs, perhaps because he wasn’t supposed to think about them. At first he felt guilty as he began to draw, but once the lipstick met the paper he could not stop until he was finished. Holding the paper to the light, Yakov felt an indescribable thrill—the plump curly-tailed treif animal was now his. He hid the drawing inside his bedroom closet. And it was on that day that he discovered the joy of art, and when the lying began.

  In time, Yakov became more sophisticated in his art. Using a pencil, he drew everything around him from memory: his mother, his father, books, food, Shabbos candles—everything he’d see would soon find its way onto paper and then into the secret box hidden in his closet. No one knew. Just him and God. And that was more than enough.

  One day, after Yakov’s father left early for the synagogue, his mother came into his bedroom, closed the door, and gestured Yakov to join her on the bed. They faced each other in silence, the kind of stern cross armed quiet that meant he’d done something wrong. He waited.

  “Yakov, I know.”

  She knew.

  Yakov, ten years old, was his mother’s only child, in a world where only children simply did not exist, unless there were problems. And there were definitely problems. Yakov would hear his mother cry at night through his bedroom wall, telling his father that she was half a woman because she could not have more children. She would go on about her sister Channa with six kids and pregnant with the seventh, and why was it God’s way that she should only have one? And all the babies she lost before and after Yakov. Five, she would cry, five. At dinner, Yakov would see the disappointment unveiled in his father’s eyes when he’d look at his wife ac
ross the table, and then Yakov would see his mother’s fallen face. But right now, his mother, angry and sad with five dead pregnancies, knew.

  “Are you going to tell him, Mama?” Yakov asked quietly. He was not scared of his father, just terrified of losing his collection of artwork.

  “No,” she whispered, gently wiping away a wisp of light brown hair from his forehead. Her green eyes welled up. Yakov thought, if only he could draw her like that: the loose hair falling out of her bun, her head tilted just so, her beautiful wet green eyes that were the same color as the sofa.

  “I’m afraid for you, Yakov.”

  “Don’t be,” he said, sitting up straight, knowing she hated when he slouched. “I’m not afraid.”

  “But your father … and the rabbi. It is forbidden. The drawings. You need to study your Torah.” His mother’s tone was stern but her gaze was milky and far away. “You are too young to understand. But passion, dreams of something else, something better—can destroy.” Silent, slowmoving tears began to fall lightly against her cheeks.

  Are you still talking about me, Mama? Yakov wanted to ask, but knew better. Instead, he reached for his mother’s trembling hand and held it tightly, protectively, inside his own.

  “I won’t tell him,” she promised through her tears. “But you must stop. You must … ” Her voice trailed away.

  That day, his art and his lies became hers; an umbilical cord of shared but necessary silence.

  What Yakov’s mother did not know was that the pencil and paper were not enough. Yakov knew that only he could answer the voice nagging deep inside him: More.

  More began with stolen crayons and paints from a nearby hardware store. More led Yakov to the Chicago Public Library, with its treasure trove of art books on painters, paintings, technique, and even lessons. He could not just borrow those books. That would leave a record. His father would somehow find out. At first Yakov thought that one book on Michelangelo would be enough, but it simply whet his appetite. Soon, one book became two; two became five; five turned into ten. Today’s book marked eighteen—the most significant of all biblical numbers, he thought. Eighteen was chai—life.

  These books give me life. Surely God understands, Yakov rationalized as he closed the heavy library door behind him.

  Holding the book close to his chest, he ran the eight blocks from the library to the cheder—the dank, windowless classroom where he studied six days a week with the rabbi and other boys from his community. If only the rabbi could know that Yakov cared nothing about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—except to paint them. If only he could paint the sacrifice of Isaac in Abraham’s hands. If only he could paint the beautiful Rachel with her long, thick, black hair and those full breasts that tempted Jacob, making him work seven years, day and night, like an ox, just to “know” her. How many times did Yakov paint that scene in his head at night, or daydream in the classroom while the rabbi droned on? If only he could paint all of his favorite biblical stories, but it was as forbidden as worshiping the Golden Calf. The images were allowed only in his head, and in his heart. His hands were bound and restrained. Painting was breathing, and Yakov was suffocating. But one day, he knew, things would be different.

  Yakov told no one about the art books. He had friends, boys he grew up with, but none could be trusted not to tell the rabbi that he broke the Eighth Commandment eighteen times. Nineteen, if you counted the pig. He patted the treasured book inside his coat as he nervously opened the classroom door, knowing before he crossed the threshold exactly what was waiting for him.

  “Yakov Klein, you are late again!” the rabbi shouted when he entered the room, six minutes after the other boys.

  “I’m sorry.” Yakov kept his gaze glued to the scratched-up wood floor.

  “You’re always sorry.”

  “I’m really not sorry,” Yakov muttered under his breath.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  As Yakov walked over to his desk, a leg stuck out into the aisle and tripped him on purpose. Yakov went flying, and so did Gustav Klimt. The boys laughed until they saw the rabbi bend over and pick up the stolen book, then there was dead silence. Yakov Klein, the class troublemaker, was in big trouble.

  “What is this?” the rabbi demanded, his eyes blazing as he held up the book. “And where did you get it?”

  Yakov knew better than to speak.

  “Answer me!”

  Yakov stared up at the rabbi, who was tugging angrily on his long, scraggly beard, waiting. He stole a glance at the boys around him, who were half worried for him and half thinking, better him than me.

  “It’s a book,” he said slowly.

  “Don’t tell me what I already see. Tell me what I don’t.”

  Yakov paused, long enough to muster his courage. “It’s a book about art.”

  “It doesn’t belong here!” The rabbi wagged an angry finger, the same angry finger he used whether he was discussing Commentary or Torah or doling out discipline. That finger was loaded.

  Eyeing the finger, Yakov whispered, “I don’t belong here, Rabbi.”

  “Don’t belong here?” mocked the rabbi who was nearing eighty or ninety—no one knew for sure. He opened and quickly slammed shut the book on Klimt, the loud clap echoing throughout the musty room. His dark eyes behind thick glasses blazed as he wagged that finger in double-time. “Barely fourteen years old. You think you know about life, but you know nothing.”

  Yakov quickly glanced at the other boys, his friends. No one said a word. He saw the terror in their eyes, but suddenly, strangely, he felt none inside his own body. He took a few steps forward and stood defiantly before the rabbi. “I will show you something about life.”

  The rabbi’s eyes widened with disbelief at his insolent student. But there was something else in those black eyes that Yakov saw immediately, which the rabbi could not conceal: curiosity. The rabbi, a teacher, a father of eight and grandfather of thirty, was only a man after all.

  Yakov did not wait for a response. He quickly reached inside his desk and took out the piece of paper that he had been hiding for several months. He handed it to the rabbi. “This, I drew for you.”

  The rabbi took the paper and held it with both hands, first at arm’s length and then up into the light. Slowly, he brought the drawing close to his face. It was a picture of the rabbi, alone, praying in his study. His large white tallis—a hand-woven shawl with thick black stripes—was draped like a cape over his shoulders, his tefillin—phylacteries—were wrapped tightly around his forehead and arm. His heavy-hooded eyes bulged not with the wrath of a dissatisfied teacher but with the joy of Morning Prayer. It was an intense, intimate moment that Yakov had captured.

  The rabbi tore his gaze away from the image and stared at Yakov. Known as a man who could scold like a snake and reduce a boy to tears with a mere glare, the rabbi was, for the first time, speechless, that finger hanging limply at his side. There was well over a minyan of witnesses as the rabbi stood in silent awe of his worst student’s God-given talent.

  That look was all Yakov needed to confirm what he already knew: He was chosen.

  GREEN

  “Great art picks up where nature ends.”

  —Marc Chagall

  Chapter One

  PARIS, 1932

  Julian stepped off the train platform at Gare de Lyon and onto the cobblestone street. Clutching his suitcase, portfolio, and new identity, he drew in a deep, satisfied breath.

  I’m here, finally.

  Sharp fumes from passing cars and garbage rot were certainly not what he expected. Somehow, the air in Paris should be savory, sweet, musky, or wine-scented, not ripe with urban odors. As Julian waited for a taxicab, a stylish young woman with long auburn curls walked toward him with an airy bounce, quickly making him forget the stench. Her dress was clingy and floral. Blooming red roses gripped her curvaceous body like a silk glove. Julian smiled at her. She paused, and he knew what she saw: the white even teeth and boyish dimples—a smile that coul
d sell anything, his mother used to say. But this girl wasn’t buying. She rolled her eyes, giggling, and kept walking. Julian realized he had a large baguette crumb hanging off of his lip. He heard her still laughing as she crossed the street.

  “Where to?”The driver leaned out of the Renault window, speaking without even looking at him.

  Julian knew he should go to the university to get situated. His first class started tomorrow, but the day was still young. He hesitated, but only for a few seconds. Why not?

  “Where do the artists hang out?” he asked in broken French. He understood the language much better than he could speak it. “The Left Bank,” the driver said gruffly. “Get in.”

  Café de Flore at the corner of boulevard Saint Germain and rue Saint-Benoît was crowded. The outdoor seating area was packed with young people drinking, talking, and smoking shoulder to shoulder. No one seemed to mind the sardine-like arrangement. On the contrary, Julian noted, as he approached the restaurant, they appeared to revel in it.

  When he entered the two-story café, he was struck by the expensive décor filled with large mirrors, mahogany furniture, and candy apple red-cushioned seats lining the walls. Julian was used to cheap crummy diners with scattered old newspapers left behind on the seats and cracks on the walls that no one bothered to fix. This place, in comparison, was immaculate, and probably too pricey. He patted his coat and felt the comforting thickness of the wad of money concealed inside a sewn-in pocket. He must have checked the pocket a thousand times on his long journey to Paris. This money was all he had to get by. He had to pace himself. He was hungry, but a cup of coffee and bread would have to do.

  He scanned the room. Tiny round tables were brimming with young people. He saw dozens of large portfolios leaning against chair legs. Artists. Julian’s heart beat fast. So this was it. Paris—home of Picasso, Braque, Chagall, Monet, Manet, Renoir, Cézanne—every artist who mattered. And now me. It seemed only yesterday that he had left his parents’ home in Chicago for New York. Left? Julian shook his head at the innocence of that word—more like ran for his life.